Worthless
by strayphoenix
Summary: I was helpless. Their drugs had taken almost all of my powers, my strength and my sight. I still had Scott, and my love, but was it enough? Jean POV. M to be safe.


Worthless

The leather whip slashed at my bare back again like a deadly viper. I screamed. Not because I knew it would get them to stop. I knew it wouldn't. I screamed to save myself from insanity.

All around me I heard the cheers of the crowd. They didn't care about me. To them I was just another mutant in their Ringling Brothers of torture. They were getting their money's worth seeing a half-naked, barely-alive mutant have the living daylights beaten out of her.

Every time I said that to myself, I questioned if I really believed it. Wearing nothing more that the panties I had put on the night before in front of God knows how many blood-thirsty spectator, I felt as if I was nothing more that a slave being convicted for the crime a white man decided to pin on me. Was I truly that worthless?

"Hit that mutie witch again!" came a shout from the crowd. A roar of cheers erupted from the stadium.

Or what I thought was a stadium.

They had blindfolded my for reasons I don't remember them explaining at all after giving the sole excuse of Scott and me being mutants as grounds for kidnapping us.

Scott.

I felt so bad to be wallowed up in my pain that I had forgotten that he was probably going through the same hell I was.

I didn't tap into our psychic link. I was too weak. And even if I wasn't, I didn't have time to.

The whip stuck again, harder this time, as if fueled by the roar of the crowd.

"Please…" I begged through a broken voice and swollen lips, "…stop"

A male voice from behind me laughed as the whip struck yet again, drawing more blood from my already tattered back.

Without the help of my telekinesis, the arena shook at my strangled scream.

Suddenly, a door I couldn't see opened itself. From the changed noise of the crowd, I could tell that this wasn't part of the show.

"What the-" the man began but didn't get to finish.

I distinctly head a few punches be exchanged followed by the snap of a bone that I knew meant the end of my assailant's life.

I heard an all too familiar 'zzzzakt' noise as my cuffed hands fell to my side from where they were tied to the chain that held them useless above my head. My knees, bruised and weak, gave out from under me and I dropped to the ground. My body never hit the sand, though. It was intercepted by a boy.

I tuned out the numerous groans and swear words that were coming from the crowd as I found myself wrapped in my savior's embrace. The chest I found my face and breasts plastered against was bare, swollen and scarred but comforted me like it had done so many times before when I had felt hurt and lonely. He didn't need to speak and I already knew whose arms were wrapped around my broken body.

"Shhhh. It's OK, it's alright, Jean. I've got you. They won't hurt you anymore, I promise" he whispered as he lowered us down to the ground. He held my upper body up and kissed the crown of my head.

"Scott?" a voice I commanded but sounded nothing like my own, asked.

"Do you even need to ask?"

"What did I do wrong?" I asked in return as I crossed my arms over my breasts to be certain that they couldn't be seen anymore. Tears I thought I had run out of slowly slipped down my cheeks, mingling with the blood that had been drawn earlier.

"You didn't do anything wrong" he whispered as his own tears slipped down his cheeks and chin into my hair. "You never did anything wrong"

It was then that I realized what love was. Everyone thought I was too young to know. They thought I was too foolish and too desperate to give my heart and soul away so easily to a man. But Scott wasn't any man. He was my best friend. He'd always been my best friend and he'd always be even though our relationship recently turned more towards the romantic.

Even now as I lay in his arms, practically naked as numerous spectators 'boo'ed and heart-wrenching sobs shook my body, he wasn't thinking of sex or lust. He held me for my own comfort, not his own pleasure. It was something I can never see any other person ding for me.

Then I remembered the blindfold that held my eyes captive from the light. I fiddled with the knot for a while and then, with Scott's help, I finally undid it.

Nothing.

I desperately ran my hands up and down my naked face, looking to see if there was a second blindfold, a mind control chip, something…anything.

There was nothing.

I was blind.

"Scott?" I asked, my voice shaking.

He held me closer to him.

"I tried to stop them…I really did…I'm so sorry"

He spoke the last words as if the fact that I was born a mutant was his fault. As if all that was happening was his fault. His and his alone.

My sobs became more violent as I hugged him and buried my face in is strong chest.

The elevation of the crowd's cheers shocked us both out of our reveries.

I didn't need my eyes to know that the door Scott had come in from was now open again and that the people standing there had ideas very different then Scott's. I also didn't need my telepathy to know that Scott was scared.

He tightened his embrace so that he was grabbing me and slowly inched away on his rear from the sound of at least five sets of footsteps, dragging me with him.

"Stay back" Scott warned. His voice was only a firm whisper and I clung to him harder, almost drawing blood with my nails, as I heard the fear in his voice.

I was helpless. Their drugs had taken almost all of my powers, my strength and my sight. I still had Scott, and my love, but was it enough?

Scott continued to drag us back, still warning our assailants and comforting me.

"You stay the fucking hell away from her, you hear?" he growled in a slightly louder voice.

>They won't touch you> he sent to me. >They'll have to kill me to get to get their hands on you>

His words were of no comfort. They would kill him. Psychos like them would.

And he knew it.

He stopped as his back hit a wall and we were driven into a corner, like animals on a hunt.

"Please!" he begged in a desperate whisper. He was crying. "She's only eighteen! You can't!"

Suddenly, I felt a cold hand grab my ankle.

Before I could scream or even react, Scott rolled over me so that I was the one sitting up against the wall and he was pinning me to it with all his might. The hand had no choice but to release my ankle.

"I SAID BACK OF HER YOU BASTARDS!" he screamed at them.

A strong hand grabbed him and pulled him off of me. I reached out for him with one hand as I covered myself with my other arm.

"Don't leave me" I whispered, my voice barely audible above the roar of the stands. But this was Scott. I knew he could hear me.

"LET GO OF ME!" he shouted, then added telepathically, >I won't leave you! I'd never leave you!>

I hated being so helpless. I defeated the purpose of being an X-Man. X-Men were strong and could defend themselves. Now it was all on Scott, with the odds stacked up high against us.

The same hand that had gone at my ankle earlier now grabbed my outstretched wrist, almost crushing it.

I screamed out in pain. Someone was there to hear this time.

I heard the sounds of a struggle in the direction that Scott had been dragged.

"STOP IT! STOP IT!" he yelled.

Then with a battle cry, I heard the sound of a powerful optic blast followed by the 'thud' of a body hitting the floor.

The crowd erupted in shouts of outrage as I heard the battle ensue.

But I had bigger problems to worry about.

The companion of the hand that had grabbed my wrist grabbed my shoulder and pulled me away from the wall much to the approval of the stands.

They hands threw me to the floor in a heap. The man whom the hands belonged to straightened me out so that I was lying flat on my openly cut-up back with my breasts in full view. I couldn't put up much of a struggle. I had a strong will but no energy to back it up. That happens a lot in life.

My persecutor ripped off my panties and what was left of my dignity while kicking a leg over me to straddle me.

A wave of cheers erupted from the audience. They were happy to see me be raped. They were getting what they paid for.

"NO! GET OFF HER!"

I heard Scott's desperate shout and focused extremely hard on using my telekinesis. Using every little bit of mental strength that I didn't even know I had, I managed to throw off two of Scott's captors while weakly struggling with the rapist.

I had used what little power I had so that there was no way that I could have stopped what came next.

Two more people came at me, each pinning one of my arms out to the side. I had no way to fight back. I looked as if I were crucified to the ground.

I heard several more optic blasts and the slight change in the crowd's enthusiasm told me that I didn't waste my telekinesis: Scott had managed to break free.

I heard the sounds of Scotts running footsteps, running to me. I heard the groans of the audience, whose expensive show had been interrupted once again.

Then came the sound of a gunshot.

The running footsteps ceased and in their place, came the sound of a body hitting the floor.

The crowd went wild.

"No" I whispered unbelieving me. They couldn't.

As it slowly donned on me, my cries grew louder and more desperate until I was screaming and thrashing for all I was worth. My captors were having trouble keeping me subdues.

"NO! SCOTT! NO! NO!"

I desperately tried to tap into our rapport. Succeeding, I begged him for an answer.

>Scott! Say something! …C'mon baby, anything! …let me know you can hear me! …please, you can't die on me! …not now…>

I kept thrashing my body, in hopes to throw off my persecutors, with no avail.

Suddenly, I felt a needle go into my skin and puncture one of my veins. A cold liquid flowed out from the bottle and into my blood.

I cried out again, more of in distraught than pain this time.

The audience laughed at me as I found my body paralyzed by the liquid and my fear.

The body on top of me shifted and brought its lips to forcefully meet mine.

At first I tried to struggle. Who wouldn't? Then I realized something.

I knew those lips.

A pair of hands touched the sides of my face, wiping away my tears with the thumbs.

I knew those hands.

Almost as if my body had taken on a life of its own, I fought the paralysis and managed to kiss back.

'No!' a voice in my head shouted at me. 'It's a trick! Don't fall for it! It'll hurt you more!'

But something else told me it wasn't a trick. Something else told me I'd die if it was. Something called love.

The lips pulled back, despite my efforts to keep them pressed to mine.

I made another attempt to see light. To find out whose lips were kissing mine.

My eyes opened to a very weird scene.

I was in my bedroom, in my pajamas, looking up at what was left of my ceiling. I let my eyes drift down to see whose hands were still holding me. What I saw was Logan and Ororo pinning my arms down. Their grips slightly loosened now that I was awake. They both looked like they had done 48 consecutive hours in the Danger Room: their pajamas were ripped and torn, their worried and exhausted faces cut and bruised.

Standing slightly behind Logan stood Dr. McCoy, an empty syringe in his hand and a slightly warm of relief painted across his face.

Even further behind, in the back corner of what remained of my room (it looked like a nuclear war zone) I saw Kitty, Evan, and the Professor hidden behind what looked like a prison of spikes. I'd apparently been throwing things. On the opposite side of my room, Kurt was helping Rogue out of a large crater in the wall. Whoops.

Finally my eyes drifted to the figure seated on top of me. Scott looked like Hell. The look of horror on his face was so intense, you'd think he'd witnessed the Holocaust, Pompeii and the Titanic.

All I wanted to do in that moment was throw my arms around him, kiss him senseless, and cry my eyes out on his shirt. Of all three things, all I managed, thanks to the paralysis was a few tears slipping down my cheeks.

Luckily, Scott got the idea. He traded his horror face with a loving smile and he leaned down to embrace me.

"It's OK, it's OK. It was just a dream. Shhhhh…"

He held me like he had in my dream and stroked my hair soothingly as Logan and Ororo released me.

Still incapable of motion, I cried silently on his neck where he had propped my head.

>Do you have any idea how much I love you> I sent weakly with a tiny smile.

Holding my head in position with one of his hands, he kissed me. >I could ask you the same thing> he responded as he gave me a little squeezed and tucked my head under his again.

A lone tear slipped down his cheek and down the lips I knew were smiling into my hair.

FIN


End file.
